Nurturing Citizenship in Higher Education: Public Achievement-Style Education at Tokai University

Overview & Synopsis

The aim of this paper is to examine the possibility of how higher education can develop citizenship education within Japan. For this purpose, we will explore the background and history, the definitions, and the big picture of curricula as well as the goals of Tokai public achievement-style education as citizenship education, and its practices since the program commenced in 2017. Also, we try to identify successful key factors and some future challenges of citizenship education in higher education. As a result, we conclude that Public Achievement is not merely a set of educational methods, but a philosophy that values self-directed learning by individual citizens and encourages their authentic participation in creating a collective learning culture. To facilitate citizenship education further, the university also needs to create a learning culture to value this authentic participation of students, faculty, and staff in operating its organization and surrounding society.